Health Highlights: Sept. 28, 2008

Title: Health Highlights: Sept. 28, 2008
Category: Health News
Created: 9/29/2008 2:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 9/29/2008

The best method has always been to ask people you trust such as your family, friends, doctors and colleagues but you are still faced withthe lack of confidentiality and scope. I mean, if you have a personal problem, you don't go telling all your friends yet how do you ask for their recommendations. It isn't a problem with minor issues like a dentist or a chiropractor but certain types of diseases make it difficult to ask for recommendations from your friends. Another hurdle is scope. I can only ask my friends and ask them to ask their friends. This is clumsy, time consuming and lacks confidentiality.

Pascal Helou

Credible reviews from people you know and trust!

It seems that every doctor that I see has an award of Best Doctor on their wall. There is no shortage of listings, reviews, and rankings on best doctors, both online and in print. The walls in doctors offices are not large enough to display all the wards yet the lack of credibility persists. You don't know who is doing the reviews, or who is ranking the doctors.

There are a dozen leading websites that rate and compare doctors. The first problem that patients looking for doctors are faced with is fraud. Most of these sites don't even require that users log in. Some allow anyone to rate any doctor with a single click. They can also rate as often as they like. This only generates worthless ratings. Sites that take the next step of making users log in only require that you provide an email address which does little to reduce fraud. The second issue with these leading doctors rating websites is who is rating these doctors? Do I trust my health and potentially my children's lives to some random star rating from anonymous internet users? No.

Magazines promising to help you find the best doctors always generate sales but fail to deliver on their promise. Print media is so limited since you cannot compare doctors, check credentials or perform further research.

The Easiest Way to Find the Best Doctors

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Patient Harm From Problem 'Handoffs' Is Common: Report

Title: Patient Harm From Problem 'Handoffs' Is Common: Report
Category: Health News
Created: 9/27/2008 2:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 9/29/2008

What does it mean to your dentist? He has to face a very tough competition. He must pay his increasing costs (malpractice insurance, new materials, office maintenance) from an ever shrinking pool of potential patients. The only way he can do it is by raising income derived from each patient.

With the amount of information available today on the Internet you can educate yourself in the new and not so new techniques used for the dental care. You might be able to save a lot of money that way. And yes, by educating yourself you can have better teeth.

Can you always trust your dentists' recommendations? Think for yourself - in the last 30 years the health of our teeth has improved dramatically. We drink fluoridated water, which almost eliminated decay in our teeth.

We eat better, we brush and floss. Yet the amount of money we spend on dental care continues to rise. Could it be connected to the fact that the amount of dentists is increasing every year without any proportion to increases in population?

Can You Always Trust Your Dentist's Recommendations?

Evaluate your dentists recommendations using the same common sense, as you would apply to any other business proposition. Is it really necessary? Is there some other alternative treatment, which may achieve the same result?

Let's face it - your dentist is in a business like everyone else. And since it is a very attractive business (the dentists' income is three to five times above the average), more and more students are graduating from dental schools every year.

Yes, I know. Your dentist is a decent person. He wouldn't do such things. I agree with you. But often there is no clear-cut solution (in most cases). I want to believe that most dentists are good. But why are their prices keep rising?

There is a clear contradiction here. You want to spend as less as possible on your dental care, and your dentist will earn less if he does that.

What does it mean to you? You are the one, who is asked to pay the price. As the marketing experts phrase it: "In order to stay in business, a dentist must offer bigger and better services". Translate it into regular language - the dentist must try to sell you more services regardless whether you need them or not.

The amount of money we spend on dental medical services is already insane and it grows every year. A dentist pays hundreds of thousands of dollars for his rising insurance costs, office maintenance, assistant and secretary salaries. If he makes less than $400,000 a year, he considers himself a failure.

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